With the increasing popularity of playing streaming audio and video over networks such as the Internet, there is plurality of methods to provide media streams to clients over networks.
A media stream comprises of multimedia data, such as images, video, audio or the like. A media stream may be downloaded in a streamlining manner. Additionally or alternatively, the media stream may be downloaded in a non-streaming manner, such as by downloading a file comprising the media stream.
Media streams may be compressed using lossy compression techniques so to reduce their size. Lossy compression techniques remove information from the media stream, thus reducing the quality thereof, but enabling a faster transmission of the media stream. U.S. Patent Publication 2010/0,189,183 entitled “MULTIPLE BIT RATE VIDEO ENCODING USING VARIABLE BIT RATE AND DYNAMIC RESOLUTION FOR ADAPTIVE VIDEO STREAMING” to Gu et al, which is hereby incorporated by reference, discloses a-priori compression of a media content into plurality of alternative qualities, and enabling switching therebetween during streaming of the media content, based on network conditions.
A user may potentially chose a between different compression versions of the same media stream, such as between a media stream of High Definition (HD) quality and between a Standard Definition (SD) quality. The decision of the user may be based on the different network conditions, and in particular download rate, and on a desired quality of the media stream. The user's decision is a-priori prior to downloading the media stream.